A typical semiconductor chip comprises a back-end-of-line (BEOL) layer on top of a front-end-of-line (FEOL) layer, wherein the semiconductor devices reside at bottom surface of the BEOL layer (i.e., at top surface of the FEOL layer). Assume that a traveling particle impacting on the top surface of the chip goes through the BEOL layer to impact on the semiconductor devices of the chip. The energy of the traveling particle when it hits the semiconductor devices at the bottom of the BEOL layer determines the susceptibility of the semiconductor devices to soft-errors. Therefore, there is a need for a method of determining a stopping power of the BEOL layer with respect to the traveling particle.